BigRedX

With a previous (originals) band, we mostly did all the promotional work ourselves. Our singer was very good at engaging with bands/venues/promoters on social media, and telephone and an entertaining live show coupled with a couple of lucky breaks early on, meant that we were rarely short of paying live work. However that nagging feeling that there must be someone out there who could get us even better gigs - ideally supports with well-known (within the genre) bands at bigger venues lead us to try out a promoter who appeared to be getting other bands decent gigs. He managed to lad us a tour support with a well-known German Rockabilly band (my musically inclined German relatives were impressed that we'd landed the gigs), but the reality was that they were virtually unheard of in the UK and apart from the final night of the tour in London where The Meteors had been added to the bill, we played to audiences that had only really come to see us.

To the OP - why is it important that you identify the wood that neck is made out of?

Eurovision is about much more than the song contest and has nothing to do with the EU - almost half the current entry are not EU members. According to friends I have in the TV and radio industry being one of the big 5 Eurovision members bring a lot of technological advantages from a broadcast PoV which is why the Uk is still a member. However on the other hand having to host a Eurovision Song Contest Final is now impossible financially without government aid, so there is an unwritten rule that the UK entry must not be even remotely capable of troubling the top spot. If the rest of the Eurovision nations hated the UK as much as people think, they would have a much sweeter revenge by ensuring the UK entry won, and then watching all our broadcast institutions go bankrupt trying to organise the final. As it is they have little or no interest in UK the UK and just get on with voting for their friends or the songs they actually like.

Kramer aluminium necks are either 34” scale for 20 fret necks, or 30” scale if they have 24 frets. The necks are exactly the same, just the finger boards cut for the appropriate number of frets. The one in the eBay link will be 34” scale.

I think what Bassassin is trying to say is that they are quite difficult to get hold of, and that the price will be over-inflated, compared with one made in the same factory that is identical in every way except for a less "sexy" name on the TRC.

What sort of a band is it? Covers or originals? If it is covers what sort of market are you aiming for? Pub gigs or weddings/functions? What do you want the promotor to do that you can't already do yourself?

That's the best idea. Somewhere between impossible to fret and buzzing all over the place is fine by me.

BTW. Posting a message in a thread and hoping the Moderators will see it is completely pointless (unless it's in a contentious thread in Off-Topic) as shown by the bass guitar thread that hung about in the Amps section for almost a month before it got moved. If you want a Moderator to move your thread you need to "report" it.

Maybe... But no-one in their right mind goes looking at pictures of transit vans.

Sell them all and then start again. You know you want to...

Mastering is as much as about making a set of tracks sound like a coherent whole as it is about making an individual track sound good. Decisions made when mastering a single track may not be the same as those made when mastering the same track in combination with others. Bear that in mind as you may need to get you single track remastered when it becomes part of an album.

Why? No offence to stewblack, but unless he's bought that Alien Ant Farm custom job or a Katana, it will look just like every other Fender bass.

Just turn up the input gain on your amp then. Changing the pickups or pre-amp on your bass will change the sound.

Their second single "You're History", was a top ten hit in 1989 - 3 years before "Stay".

Without Jerry Dammers on keyboards, is it really the Specials?

I was cured of any interest I might have had in watching football by being taken to see Notts County draw 0-0 against Workington Town on a cold, wet miserable Saturday afternoon in 1968. Despite the fact that we were stood behind one of the goals, all the action happened at the other end of the pitch in both halves. I couldn't wait to get home to the warm and dry and do something more interesting like play with my Lego.

@Al Krow Finally there is a 1' 30" preview of our forthcoming single up on iTunes. Search for Hurtsfall and you'll be able to hear it. Unfortunately it cuts off before we get to the "middle 8" where I go all guitar-y on the Bass VI, so you'll have to wait until the official release date in July to hear it in its full glory.

Sorry. I thought you were down for the Whitby Goth Weekend (WGW). Ignore everything I said (although it might still be relevant). BTW SLAG should definitely be playing Whitby if you can.

Behringer X18 £327 plus a decent WiFi router, and then control it from your phone or tablet.

WGW is a completely different ballgame, because of the audience and the fact that it is very tightly run on the nights. I'm a regular in the audience - I go to most unless the lineup is particularly weak. The best way to describe it is a professionally organised multi-band gig in the big venue with a good stage and PA. Are you down for October/November this year? BTW don't expect to see many "exotic Steampunk chicks" in the audience for the gigs. They are too busy parading around the town for the photographers.

It really depends on exactly how your band approaches playing the songs they have chosen. If your role in the band is to play a bass guitar part that fits the song, and rhythmically holds down the bottom end, then as EBS_freak says, DI into the PA and use the superior facilities of your mixer to compress and EQ your sound to suit the band mix. On the other hand if you need to accurately nail the specific tonal characteristics of the bass line of each individual song, then you are going to need a good programmable multi-effects and probably also a keyboard synthesiser.

As you can probably tell I'm not a big fan of festivals. The only one I've ever really enjoyed was the annual Rock and Reggae festival in Nottingham mostly because it was free to get in to and I lived less than 10 minutes walk away, so if the music or weather was not to my liking I could simply go home until it improved, without feeling that I wasn't getting value for money. The Terrortones had one year where we managed to score a decent number of festival slots. The only one that had other bands playing that I actually wanted to see, kept getting cancelled and then was back on again, and finally we decided to tell the organisers that we couldn't do it partly due to the uncertainty and partly because I had the opportunity to go an all expenses paid holiday that included the festival weekend. I think in the end it didn't go ahead. For the others it rained (often quite heavily and occasionally on the stage) except for one that was held indoors on a brilliantly sunny day, so of course everyone was outside enjoying the sun and virtually no-one saw us play. I'm sure festivals in countries that have decent weather are great. I remain to be convinced about their desirability in the UK.

IME Japanese-made basses that require a special case due to size and/or shape, generally come with one.

If it's not deflatable at the flick of a switch like the BassMute, then I really can't see what the advantage of it is over a piece of foam under the strings.

For me the whole point of a Rickenbacker bass (or any other bass for that matter) is that it offers something different to Fender P or J and their copies. It seems to me that most of those who try a Rickenbacker and don't get on with it really want something that plays, feels and sounds like the Fender but with the 4001/4003 body shape holographically laid over the top.